Page 5 of Lord of Ruin (The Age of Blood #2)

Chapter Three

Isaac

I saac understood what was happening the moment the Guards—two of them, this time, instead of the regular one—dragged him to the bathing room.

First, it was off his regular schedule, the carefully built structures of his captivity having settled into a strict, rote repetition that was nearly maddening in its consistency.

Second, it was a more thorough cleaning than usual, the water scented with rose oil in addition to the simple soap he had gotten used to.

His hair, which had grown into a long and tangled mess, was carefully brushed and trimmed.

A valet was called in to tend his beard, and the shave was closer and more precise that anything he had received in months.

And finally, after all the prepping had been done, his clothes were replaced with new ones, soft and clean, if not fine.

They did not give him a binder—they hadn’t given him a binder since he had been imprisoned. But thankfully, the shirt was loose enough to hide the small swell of his breasts, and if he was careful enough, no one should notice.

It was the closest he had felt to being human in a long time, but Isaac knew that such considerations were not for him. No, there was only one reason why the Guards would care that he was clean and decent and somewhat cared for.

The Eternal King was coming to visit.

When they returned him to his cell, the Guards didn’t bother to latch him back into the dreadful chair that he was bolted into for most of the day, nor the muzzle that kept him from speaking.

It was always one or the other, locked into the chair as the Guard tipped water down his throat; muzzled and manacled as they let him walk circles around the cell to prevent muscle atrophy.

He was weak and tired, thin and drained, as he waited for his death.

But today, they let him roam free as they returned to their posts, back to the brick wall across from the cell as they watched him.

For a second, he wondered if he could do something, anything, to fight them.

That maybe, with a bit of his own blood, he could manage it.

Overpower the two Blood Workers staring him down, armed with claws and daggers and a long blade on a pike—long enough that they could strike him down through the iron bars if they so chose.

Once he had surmounted all that, he would need to make it through the series of wards and all the Guards in between him and freedom.

To attempt it would be insanity, and Isaac let the idea fade before even the tiniest bit of hope could sink its claws into his heart.

The words that Samuel had whispered in his ear, near a month ago now, were bad enough.

There was no escaping his fate, and despite the bold words he had whispered to the man he betrayed the most, Isaac wasn’t sure if he even deserved it anymore.

All the despicable things he had done, both for the King and to undermine him, only to fail?

If it had worked, he could have forgiven himself. Justify the terrible costs if it meant that the world was better off. But it hadn’t worked, so how was he to live with all the blood on his hands?

The ward above him shivered, splitting and cracking, and Isaac heard the soft rhythm of the King’s heartbeat.

Steady as a metronome, never faltering. But there was someone else with him, someone whose heart fluttered an unsteady beat.

He recognized that sound, he had grown all too familiar with the way it echoed in his own chest. It was a heart driven by fear.

What poor soul was the King bringing into this mess with him?

The footsteps grew louder as his guests descended the stairs, sinking into his own little private piece of hell, Isaac stepping forward to wrap his hands around the bars.

The guard on the left twitched, his hand tightening on his weapon, but snapped to attention as the Eternal King rounded the corner with Shan LeClaire on his arm.

She looked just as beautiful as the last time he had seen her, when she had cut down Alessi and ruined the last of his plans.

Then, she had been brilliant with fury, incandescent with rage, but now she was every bit the proper Blood Worker.

She wore a fashionable gown of deepest red, the bodice pulled tight so that his gaze fell naturally to the heave of her breasts.

It tapered to her narrow waistline, accentuated so that he ached to wrap his hands around her, before spilling in waves around her legs to drape across the floor.

And on her hands were silver claws made of shining steel, elegant in their simplicity, but still sharp enough to rend flesh.

Isaac swore his breath caught in his throat as he looked his fill, but she didn’t look at him.

No, her gaze was cast low and demure in a way that did not feel like an affectation, nearly hiding behind the waves of her hair.

She wasn’t playing at coy—he recognized the tension in her shoulders and the rapid beat of her heart.

Was it disgust? Anger? Disdain? No, it wasn’t any of that. It was something altogether worse.

Guilt.

So much guilt that she couldn’t bear to look at him, for it was her that saw him captured, imprisoned, and stuck in this interminable limbo as he awaited his death.

And yet, despite all that, he wanted her. His desire for her was written in his very bones, and he would go to his grave craving her touch.

He couldn’t let her know how much sway she still had over him. He drummed up the last bits of his anger, the bitterness that he nursed on all those dark, lonely nights in his cell. “You,” he spat, his voice rough from disuse, but it still landed true.

Shan flinched away, as if she had been struck.

“My dear boy,” the Eternal King said, smooth as ever.

As if nothing changed at all, and this was just another one of their many little meetings.

There was something coldly cruel about the way that the Eternal King was looking at him, as if trying to find the exact right place to strike.

“That is no way to speak to your Royal Blood Worker.”

The scream caught in his throat, the shock so sudden that he could barely even breathe. He hadn’t thought about what had happened, in the aftermath, only that despite his own efforts, Shan and Samuel still lived. Isaac never even considered that he had doomed Shan to follow his bloodstained path.

This was the cruelest thing the King could have done to punish him, and from the slight pull at the corner of the King’s mouth, Isaac knew that the cruelty was the point.

“Shan,” he choked, unsure what he could even say. But it worked, she looked at him at last, and there was no love left in her eyes.

“It is Lady LeClaire to you,” she said, with a haughty little lilt that he wasn’t used to hearing from her. “If you must address me at all.”

Isaac pushed away from the bars, blood rushing in his ears as the King dismissed the guards.

There was nothing true to glean from this…

this farce. Perhaps she still loved him, perhaps she did not.

If this was one of her masks, it was so perfect that he could not tell if it was true or not, a protection around the King or the depths of her own heart.

Either way, it did not matter.

Nothing mattered anymore.

“Why are you here?” Isaac said, staring away from his visitors. The brick wall was the same as it ever was, but it was better than facing the things he feared the most.

“Now, is that any way to talk to your King?”

Isaac bit his tongue to swallow any reactions before they could be loosed into the world. His King .

Tristan Aberforth had ceased being his King the moment he took Isaac down into the bowels of the castle, showed him the truth behind Aeravin’s blood supply, and forced him to become the monster in the shadows to see it filled.

“Forgive me,” Isaac said as he turned to face the King, infusing his words with as much acid as possible. He dipped into a bow, low, held for just a second too long to be sincere. “How may I serve you today?”

“It really is a waste.” The King looked him over from head to toe, assessing but pitying. “There was such potential in you, only for you to throw it away. And for what?” He pulled back his lips, not quite a smile. “Because your bleeding heart felt bad?”

Isaac did not bother to respond. The King wasn’t interested in his arguments, he knew this from experience.

No, he was motivated by hubris alone, hubris and the sheer inability to understand any perspective that wasn’t his own.

A thousand years of ruling, of power, of immortality, could do that to a person.

“Does it matter?” Isaac asked. “What’s done is done.”

The King inclined his head, ceding the point. “Fair enough, de la Cruz. I am less interested in your whys and far more interested in your hows .”

Holding out his arm, Shan stepped forward to join him, taking her place beside the King.

They made such a pair, the sheer power of their Blood Working rolling off them in waves, overpowering in a way that made his stomach churn and his jaw ache.

Shan, as Royal Blood Worker, was more than he could have ever hoped to be, taking to it like it was her birthright.

Perhaps it was. Her father might have failed, once, but her bloodline could be traced all the way back to the founding of Aeravin.

She was a born and raised Blood Worker, a Lady who had been moving in society for her whole life.

And no matter how hard he tried, how desperately he had sought their approval and how shamelessly he twisted himself to stand among them, it would never have been as effortless as it was for her.

The gap between them had never felt so stark.

“We were hoping,” she said, sweet as honey and just as sickly, “that you can answer a few questions for us.”

“What questions?” He didn’t want to fight, to make this a struggle. He’d answer their questions if it got them to leave, because he wasn’t sure he could survive this much longer.